Nebraska voters shatter mail-in record

    Nebraska’s primary voters mostly steered clear of polling sites Tuesday while shattering the state record for absentee voting with nearly 400,000 mail-in ballots in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
    Officials had encouraged people to vote by mail, though Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts and Secretary of State Bob Evnen both pledged to forge ahead with an in-person primary even though many other states have rescheduled theirs or switched to all-mail voting.
    Voters easily broke the previous mail-in voting record of around 70,000 in 2018.
    Republican President Donald Trump and pre-sumptive Democratic challenger Joe Biden sailed to easy victories in the election, the first in-person primary since a heavily criticized election in Wisconsin five weeks ago in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
    So did Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, who faced a GOP primary challenge because of his previous criticism of Trump. Sasse will face Chris Janicek, the owner of an Omaha cake-baking company, who won a nine-way Democratic primary Tuesday night.
    In Nebraska’s Republican-dominated 3rd Congressional District, Rep. Adrian Smith easily won the GOP nomination for an eighth term. Smith will face Democrat Mark Elworth Jr., who was uncontested for his party’s nod.
    In a closely watched Democratic primary for an Omaha-based congressional district, voters chose progressive Kara Eastman over a more conservative candidate. Eastman will once again face Republican Rep. Don Bacon, as she did in 2018.
    This year’s primary was fairly low-key except for Democrats who want to unseat Bacon in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. The Omaha-area district is one of the few in Republican-led Nebraska where Democrats are competitive.
    Eastman defeated Omaha lawyer Ann Ashford and Omaha business owner Gladys Harrison to win the Democratic primary. Eastman had positioned herself as a progressive, while Ashford pitched herself as a moderate. Harrison touted herself as a unifying voice but hasn’t raised nearly as much money or gotten as much attention.
    A possible shortage of poll workers prompted Ricketts ordered members of the Nebraska National Guard to provide on-call help at short-staffed polling sites in eight counties, including the Omaha and Lincoln areas. He said Guard members would be dressed in civilian clothes, not their normal uniforms.
    Ricketts also waived a state law that requires poll workers to live in the county where they serve, largely because of a poll worker shortage.